Why so many old cultivars of peas, beans and

swede but no white cabbage, carrots and

onions?

Annette Hägnefelt, Senior Scientist

NordGen 2016-05-25

My ”seed experience”

• Worked about ~ 20 years with plant breeding

– Iceberg lettuce, carrot, spinach, Brassicas

• Variety listing, seed propagation, variety

maintenance

• Worked about ~ 10 years with commercial seed

business

My presentation

• Give one possible answer to the question in the

title

• Pay attention to the challenges in producing

seed of open-pollinated (OP) vegetables

• Why keeping the OP’s?

• Why thinking of ”User Genebank”?

Why so many old cultivars in “Fröuppropet” of peas,

beans and swede but no white cabbage, carrots and

onions?

One possible answer:

CrosspollinatedSelfpollinated

Plants multiplication strategies

• Self-pollinators – Offspring identical with

parent – homozygous - ”Pure lines”

• Cross-pollinators – Offspring divers –

heterozygous

– Openpollinated (OP) cultivars

– F1-hybrids produced by crossing inbred

parental lines

Inbreeding risk

Seed multiplication – a challenge for OP’s!

• Self-pollinators

– 5-15 plants depending on

how uniform the population is

• Cross-pollinators (OP’s)

- preferably 100 plants, 60 pl.

are good, 30-40 a minimum

The key success factors are good isolation facilities and

hard-working insects or a mild breeze and enough distance

Why can’t NordGen be the

user genebank?

NordGen’s mandate and operation

• Conservation and utilization

• Fixed budget - limited resources

– Staff

– Technical and economical resources

• NordGen grows yearly ~80-120 species

– Few of them of common interest

• We harvest and clean minimun amounts

• Lack of space, freezers get ful

• Demand is higher than availability

• Seed overplus is discarded

This is a

paradox

What is seed companies doing?

Genebank

• Open pollinated cultivars

• Heterogenity

• Local cultivars

• Small scale multiplication

• Diversity

• Crop wild relatives

• -----

• Normal seed – variable size

• House-hold multiplic. - yes

Commercial seed business

• F1-hybrids

• Uniformity

• Global varieties

• Large scale multiplication

• Novelties

• Resistant varieties

• Seed health guarantee

• Pills, priming, filmcoat,

precision etc.

• House-hold multiplication - no

Next ”Fröuppropet” 2102

• Seed propagation is a common handicraft that has lived

over generations

• Open pollinated- as well as self-pollinated crops are

maintained by our grandgrandgrandgrand children

• There is a stable demand over time for local-, niche-,

specialties-, or heritage cultivars

• ”Home produced seed” has been used as survival food

when normal food chain supply was disrupted

Thank you for your attention

Varieties on the CPVO-list

• Tomato – 3741

• Lettuce - 2089

• Onion – 1015

• Cucumber – 852

• Cauliflower - 719

• White cabbage – 713

• Carrot – 577

• Leek – 222

• Redbeet - 154

2016-02-29 AH

Challenges for NordGen

• Many crops

• Annuals, biennials, perennials

• Different wishes of soiltype

• Crop specific management strategies

• Diverse pollination strategy – self, insect, wind

– Isolations by distance

– Isolations by net/glasshouse

• Crop rotation soilborne diseases

• Different threshing techniques

• Different seed cleaning techniques

• Etc.

Seed quality

Authorities

• Correct variety

• Clean seed - free from debris

and other species

• Stipulated germination rate

Seed business

• Free from seed borne diseases

• Guaranteed resistance to

specific diseases

Why keeping the OP’s?

• My professor once said:

• When you find a new race of a disease

you can just serch for resistance in the

genpool of a crosspollinator - and you will

find it!

Kontrakterad fröproduktion

• Danmark

• Frankrike

• Italien

• USA

• Chile

• Australien

Why user genbank?

• We spread the knowledge

• Sometimes we have to discard material

– We harvest and clean minimun amounts

– NordGens seed surplus can be used and not

discarded

• Sometimes we need larger amount

– Cereals which yield few seeds/plant NordGen

have a shortage

• m

Morot

• 50 g frö/pl = 50.000 frö

• Utsäde 1.000.000 frö/ha = frö från 20 plantor

• I Sverige odlas 1800 ha morot = frö från 36.000

plantor, som endast har skördats på 360 m2

• 1.000.000 frö kostar i handeln 5000-8000 kr

• Utsäde till hela Sverige kostar ca

9.000.000 – 14.400.000 kr

Lönsamheten handlar om volymer

Self pollinating cultivars are homozygous

• Flower is a hermaphrodite - pollinates itself

– Wheat, barley, oat

– Lettuce,tomato

– Pea, bean

• Offspring is identical with parent

Cross pollinators are heterozygous

• They ”do anything” to avoid self pollination

• Large risk for inbreeding depression

– Rye, sugerbeet

– Cucumber, melon

– Carot, parsnip, parsely, dill

– All Brassicas

– Onion, leek

– Spinach, redbeet